A White Man Shot 5 People To Death In Orlando. Where’s The Outrage?

It appears the decision that an attacker was a “radical Islamist,” a “thug” or a “lone wolf battling mental issues” is based on the color of their skin.

A 45-year-old man walked into his former workplace, a company that makes accessories for motor homes, and allegedly shot five of his former colleagues — including four men and a woman — to death. He then turned the gun on himself and ended his own life.

The shocking incident took place in Orlando, Florida, at a factory named Fiamma Inc. that had fired the alleged assailant, John Robert Neumann Jr., earlier this year in April.

Neumann was former vet, discharged from the Army in 1999, and had previously been accused of battering another employee at work.

At the time of the mass shooting, he was reportedly armed with a handgun and a large hunting knife. However, the authorities said the victims had all sustained gunshot wounds. The suspect allegedly shot most of them in the head, some even more than once.

Since the horror unfolded nearly a week before the anniversary of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting, in which a 29-year-old security guard killed 49 people and wounded 58 others, the initial reports of the bloody carnage sparked fears of terrorism.

Orlando began trending on Twitter, different media outlets reported on the attack as a developing story and people began comparing the incident to the recent London terror attacks where three attackers killed seven people. Some online users even seemed certain the assailant would be just another “neighborhood Muslim extremist.”

Once the details began to emerge and the perpetrator turned out to be a “disgruntled employee,” some started to compare the carnage to the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, where a health department employee named Syed Rizwan Farook, along with his wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and injured 22 others during a Christmas party at the Inland Regional Center.

However, once the reports confirmed the Fiamma Inc. attacker was a white Christian male, the entire episode seemed to lose its novelty for many.

The police also said they did not believe the incident was terrorism-related — which is exactly what happened in San Bernardino. In both cases, the authorities found no evidence of any terrorist-related activity. Yet, Farook and Malik were dubbed “homegrown violent extremists,” while Neumann was repeatedly referred to as a “disgruntled employee” by law enforcement officials. Despite the similarities between the two tragedies, only one had the privilege to grace the airwaves for days on end, while the other died down in the matter of hours — simply because the perpetrator wasn’t a Muslim.

As soon as Neumann’s identity was released, the word Orlando soon stopped trending and most news channels went back to their scheduled programming, whereas some media outlets decided to publish the details of the assailant’s life to humanize him. For instance, the Orlando Sentinel cited a neighbor who described Neumann as a secretive man who “liked sports, going to Orlando City Soccer games and out to Daytona Beach for NASCAR races.”

Innocent people died in both instances, so why isn’t there enough outrage over the Orlando shooting as well?

Why do the media decide if an attacker was a “radical Islamist,” a “thug” or a “lone wolf battling mental issues” based on the color of their skin?

Scant media coverage of the Orlando mass shooting by a non-Muslim today again demonstrates it doesn't matter how you die, but who kills you.